Alone With You
by Neko Kuroban
Summary: In which Marisa ignores social conventions and Asriel rejects the idea of waiting for the right time. Marisa/Asriel.


**_Alone With You _was originally written two years ago and posted on LiveJournal. Someone reminded me of it today, and I thought it was worth crossposting. Please enjoy! **

**

* * *

**

Alone With You

Neko Kuroban

* * *

"Marry you?" Marisa repeated archly.

Asriel had caught her standing on the worn stone pavement in front of the Royal Courts. She was unaccompanied and unchaperoned. This was how she had always insisted on traveling; the only difference was that it was, overnight, acceptable in the eyes of Society. (Of course, it was not because Society finally accepted her ways and her authority but because a man Marisa had not loved was murdered. Now that she was a widow, her strength was suddenly something to be admired. "Poor duck!" the women who believed themselves her friends whispered to each other, "I don t know how she can still rise in the mornings!")

When he approached, she had been wishing that a watch would fit into her slender satin reticule without disrupting the elegant shape. She was counting the seconds (minutes now, she thought with a pretty frown) until the arrival of the hired carriage she had sent her barrister to fetch. The man had been her husband's counsel for years, but Marisa thought little of him. Thomas Gray was a horrible, simpering man who was always reduced to nothing in her presence. _Really_, she thought, wondering, _how difficult can it be to fetch a horse and four? Any waif in the street could have done it for the promise of a half-shilling. Perhaps I ought to remind Mr Gray of that._

The passage of time, however, was rendered irrelevant the second Asriel sauntered across the cobblestones to stand before her. Every movement he made was marked by fluid, cat-like grace. Even after everything that had happened between them, she could not help but to admire the man in the dusky evening. His skin was golden in the hazy light of sunset, and the setting sun sat astride his shoulders. His aristocratic features were obscured by the brilliant illumination, but Marisa knew him well enough to imagine his expression. It was surely the one he reserved for her: equal parts disdain, amusement, intrigue, and something even deeper, something she had never allowed

(_something she had never_ dared _to allow_)

herself to think about.

And then he had thrown _this _at her.

She did not answer his question - which he had phrased as more command than query, and was that any way to speak to a Lady of Quality? Instead, she shifted her grip on her small, fashionable clutch so that the fine gold chain is wrapped around her slender wrist. The daemon in the crook of her arm tugged at the slender strap to pull it higher on her forearm.

Marisa drew in a tight, controlled breath. "Marry you."

And if her tone is mocking, it was because it ought to be. What had happened to just minutes before? They had sat, tense and silent, across from one another at a polished mahogany table. Their refusal to speak dismayed both his attorneys and her barrister. She had cast him the occasional glance of disapproval, but he steadfastly refused to so much at her.

In fact, over the course of a two hour meeting, he had acknowledged her presence exactly three times. Three! The first was when she walked in. He stood, but she attributed this to nothing more than habit. It was merely something he always did when a woman - a lady or otherwise - entered the room. If he felt any emotion where she was concerned, there had been nothing to betray it. Even the beautiful snow leopard at his side had gone still and silent.

The second had been when the issue of the child was raised. _Our child_, he called the girl, and Marisa had primly corrected him with _your child._ She wanted nothing to do with the child she had borne and renounced. Hadn't that been made abundantly clear? He insisted that the child - a girl - remain in his care. This had been the arrangement since the day after Marisa gave birth, and she felt no desire to challenge this. Why would she choose to have the living embodiment of her scandalous affair in her life?

(He had named her Lyra, he told one of his attorneys, his veiled _damn you _to the woman across the table. Marisa's own solicitor carefully inquired as to whether the little girl had a title; it was his way of asking whether Lord Asriel's bastard daughter was above the law. Asriel recognized the question for what it was, of course, and his voice was self-satisfied when he confirmed it. The minutes Mr Gray had taken held a footnote: _The Honourable Lyra Adrastea Belacqua is to remain with Lord Asriel Belacqua, Baronet, at his Wiltshire estate until court proceedings._

Lyra.

Lyra Adrastea Belacqua.

Marisa refused to let anything show, regardless of how the daemon in her lap thrashed. She knew Asriel was watching to gauge her reaction. Her face betrayed nothing: no regret, no sorrow, no fondness, no warmth, no shame. However, she could not help but surrender, if only for a moment, to the image that rose in her mind: the child she had held only once. The girl was Asriel's without a doubt - his thick red-gold hair, his blue eyes, even the contours of his face. Marisa, furious and horrified, had not thought to look for any of herself in the infant.

Perhaps she should have.)

The third had been when the court date had been settled upon. There had been nothing there. He had simply nodded as if he had expected this outcome.

He probably had.

"Marry you." She chased her words with polished, sophisticated laughter, because the idea is simply lurid. It was, wasn't it? "I have been married before, darling." she tacked on the term of endearment in the same way another woman - a lesser woman - might spit a curse. "I honestly cannot imagine anything I would like less."

And _there _was her carriage.

Perfect.

His jaw clenched, but when she moved to get inside, he handed her up all the same - habit born during the lifespan of a love affair, one that had not yet died. Nothing more. Marisa offered him a taut smirk of _I know what you have done _- a smile that he did not return. He merely regarded her as he would a mild annoyance (such a change from only recently, when he would look at her as if he longed to memorize every facet of her!) with raised eyebrows and that piercing blue gaze.

As she settled back into the plush seat of the growler, she was already narrating the tale she will tell her companions over tea:

_He took my hand in his, and I feared that he might crush it! In fact..._


End file.
